I tried several live-cd's, and managed to run and install Ubuntu 11.10 in Unity mode, however when I installed Gnome-shell, the installation stopped (with or without Nvidia prop drivers).

I tried Mint 12 (compatability mode, nomodeset), and either: black screen, halt during boot, fall back mode. Once or twice I managed to install Mint 12 on a extern HD, but found myself in a terminal-like environment after boot.

Woah! Never seen so many issues with modern hardware and an up to date distro. The only thing I suspect is a clash between Unity and Gnome Shell, but installing Mint 12 shouldn't have given you the problems it did.

Wish I had the skills to figure it out for you, since I probably would have tried most of what you did.

The nvidia troubles are just what loads of us have been experiencing. The new default driver used by debian squeeze, ubuntu whatever and mint 12 apparently breaks a fair scatter of chips/cards, including the framebuffer - the default we can always fall back on when other things break - and it is not easy to roll back. IMHO a real dumb-bunny bad by the distro teams, especially debian stable should have known better.

I was able to fix my desktop PC only by swapping to a different graphics card (also nvidia).

Not sure why the ATI should fail, can't even remember if support is generally as good as for nvidia. How many distros did you try on it?

Disable the nouveau driver and get the official nVidia 3D drivers from the nVidia website (don't bother with the ones in the repo's) Mind that you'd need to install the nVidia driver as root on the cli, not in a terminal!

Dutch_Master wrote:Disable the nouveau driver and get the official nVidia 3D drivers from the nVidia website (don't bother with the ones in the repo's) Mind that you'd need to install the nVidia driver as root on the cli, not in a terminal!

Yes, that was the difficult bit. Has anyone posted a genuinely complete and bugfree HowTo yet? (I'm way past the need, but others may find it handy).

So where is everybody? I was thinking I was the only one having these problems. Searched in a lot of forums.

Disable the nouveau driver and get the official nVidia 3D drivers from the nVidia website (don't bother with the ones in the repo's) Mind that you'd need to install the nVidia driver as root on the cli, not in a terminal!

I think I will stick to Mint 10 for the moment, and will see if Mint 13 is more successfull for me. Or, when I have the courage, I will try one day again another graphic card; this is easier for me than working with the cli (remember: installing or even starting a live session is the problem).

I use Mint 12 on my main desktop, but on my netbook, where I've got a much lighter spec, I find Gnome 2 works better than Gnome 3, so I've gone with Mint 11. Maybe you could try that, or Xubuntu 11.10?

heiowge wrote:I use Mint 12 on my main desktop, but on my netbook, where I've got a much lighter spec, I find Gnome 2 works better than Gnome 3, so I've gone with Mint 11. Maybe you could try that, or Xubuntu 11.10?

Yes, of course; but I can't stand that my new pc, with higher specs than my old laptop, is not capable of running the newest versions. It is partly curiosity: why??
And I would like to run Mint 12 on it as Mint 10 will not be supported by the end of the year (I think).

chris0161 wrote:The intel i5 processor has limited built in on chip graphics. It looks from the image that the Packard-Bell iXtreme I6803 has a cover fitted over the motherboard dvi port.

If this is the case I would unplug the nvidia graphics card. Remove the cover off the built in dvi port (located on the rear next to the 4 usb ports) and plug your monitor into there.

If your machine boots into a desktop with a live distro this will prove your problem is with your graphics card or its driver.

Hope this is some help.

I removed the nVidia card and used the built in card (analogue in my case); then I could easily boot the Mint 12 live cd!
I installed Mint12 (my prefered distro) on an extern HD, but could not boot, not even in recovery mode.

Next I installed Ubuntu 11.10 on the extern HD, installed Gnome-shell, and could boot.

Then, very sneaky, I put the nvidia card back again; Ubuntu booted in fall-back mode (is that the right word?), even after having installed the recommended drivers. So no gnome-shell possible in my system with either nvidia 420, 440, or ATI Radeon HD 5450.